More specialty flooring retailers are using a variety of social media services to connect with consumers and increase awareness as well as manage their reputations online. Each of the major buying groups provide information and services to help members get started and maintain current information. And dealers are appreciating and benefiting from the efforts being made.Making friends on Facebook

“I asked all my personal Facebook friends to be friends of the business page too,” said Alicia Self, store manager at Colortile & Carpet in Salem, Ore. Self oversees the store’s social media activities, including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn as well as a network of members of the Salem Chamber of Commerce, but Facebook gets the most attention.

Self, daughter of storeowner David Lee, has been involved in social media for about three years. “I invested in an iPhone 5 that has an app for social media administration. I try to post every three days minimum, every day if we’re in the middle of a sales event. I ask questions on Facebook as well as post events. Our website, colortilesalem.com, has links to our Facebook page and Twitter. Our Facebook page has 279 ‘likes’ and Facebook has an app that provides great analysis that includes how many times a post is shared,” she explained.

Facebook also suits Gary Dulmes, CEO of Dulmes Décor Carpet One Floor & Home, Sheboygan, Wisc. “I started out making and posting videos on the local newspaper’s website to get attention. One time we talked about getting pet stains out of carpet and I rode a horse on the carpet. We tried to use some imagination and humor to generate some top of mind awareness (TOMA). Then I starting putting the videos on YouTube and our own website,” Dulmes noted.

Twenty-five posts go up every month, including promotions and comments that people respond to and share, Dulmes said. A photo of a dog on a bed (in a room with beautiful wood flooring) asks, “Are your pets allowed on your bed?” Within six hours, there were three comments and 14 likes.

“We post pictures of finished jobs and have had contests. If someone leaves a comment, one of the designers gets an email so the person gets a quick response,” Dulmes said.

Facebook can also be a vehicle to gather potential customer information, he noted. “We want to be seen as experts on flooring and our videos on how to get stains out of carpet help do that. We’ve posted ‘Meet our designers’ on Facebook and that helps build trust as well,” he said.

Shawn Dorr, owner of 2 Guy’s Deco Flooring America, in Gillette, Wyoming, said keeping current through Facebook is definitely worth the effort. “We do pay a fee to Flooring America to get their daily content but it’s less expensive than a newspaper ad. We have posted video testimonials, events and pictures of completed projects. There’s a picture of an exercise room in a basement with a new LVT wood-look floor, which has been clicked on 226 times,” Dorr said.

Certified Abbey Carpet & Floor, Lancaster, Pa., uses Facebook and email blasts, according to Mark Legenstein, co-owner and vice president of flooring. “We hope to achieve a regular awareness of our services and occasionally start a conversation with our customer,” Legenstein said. “This is often achieved by not even mentioning our services but (by) posting community events and other soft information.”
Angie’s List for the good, the bad and the ugly

Angie’s List, organized by geographic area, has become popular among consumers looking for all sorts of products and services. People who join Angie’s List are encouraged to write reviews — good and bad. Colortile’s Self said, “Angie’s List is great. Every time we get a review, we are notified and we check it out and follow up.”

Dulmes Décor Carpet One Floor & Home is also active on Angie’s List, which has a minimal cost, according to Dulmes. “We tell the installers to ask the customer to post reviews of our work on Angie’s List. We keep track of what’s on Angie’s List and Yelp. If somebody’s unhappy, we contact them right away and try to fix it and get the review updated. I will call and talk to the consumer myself,” he stressed.
How do you know?

Self acknowledged that “Measuring effectiveness is hard, but we ask every customer who walks in to store “How did you find us?” and a significant number of them say through Facebook or Twitter. We also use LinkedIn to keep the store name out there.”

Dulmes explained, “The effect on sales isn’t what you’d get from a sale ad in the paper, but we ask everyone who comes in, what brought them in and we are getting responses like, “We saw a picture or a post on Facebook.” I’d like to see it drive business, but its TOMA. It may not drive immediate sales but when they are ready to buy floors, we hope they will remember Dulmes Décor Carpet One.